Happily Ever Afters
by hewhoistomriddle
Summary: Itahina wedding in five installments. CRACK. Completed.
1. Wedding Planners

_Disclaimer_: I didn't write this. If I did, I want to convince myself I didn't, my brain is liquefying itself.

_Warnings_: Expect CRACK, seriously awful crack. _Run away_.

_Summary_: Itahina wedding in five 500+ word installments.

* * *

**Happily Ever Afters  


* * *

**

Uchiha Shisui was glaring at the latest copy of Konoha's leading tabloid – _The Konoha Weekly: Looking underneath the underneath!_ – willing his eyes to burn holes into it, consequently succeeding in burning off half of Hyuuga Hinata's head and everything but Itachi's magnificent nose bridge, as market statistics showed that the Uchiha heir's left profile with the sexy cheek scar sold more, and throwing the blazing gossip rag into a large vat of white chrysanthemums.

_White chrysanthemums_. Apparently the Yamanaka's were confusing the Wedding of the Century with a mass funeral. Back in the day, this would have called for a bloody retribution. In fact, he had always harbored lingering doubts that the Uchiha-Senju conflict started with a delivery of pine rather than cherrywood. Yamanaka's wielded jutsu that possess people - surely they could grow out of season flowers? Where were the freesias?

But flowers were the least of his problems, Shisui reminded himself. As best man and, therefore, the one responsible for making sure the wedding actually takes place come hell or high water, the latter being seriously plausible because of all the water-jutsu going on at the Nakano. Whoever thought to have ninja-swans decorating the river had undoubtedly inhaled too much ceremonial incense.

Clearly, it was the same person who thought that drab-old lady-blue – obtained by mixing the elegant Hyuuga white and majestic Uchiha blue, (excellent on their own but together made him more nauseous than trying to shunshin while drunk ) – was an appropriate theme color and used the communal expense account to order a truckload of kimonos of that horrifying shade. Shisui had had to mobilize underworld connections to get Oto's Tsuchi Kin, exceptionally fine at needlework, to stitch up a new batch just so nobody would instinctively go color-blind, which would be _bad _considering the bloodline limits of most of the guests.

And just last night, after finishing the accounts and decorating the last of the wedding trellises, he'd realized they've gone way overboard on the spending and were in hot water – or boiling-tar, depending on the figures – with the caterers. Thankfully, the Hyuuga Main House's coffers were _deep_, because of their miserly, feudal treatment of the branch members and of not having to pay rent and recompensation to the standing government like the Uchiha's had to.

But enough of that. He really should be more concerned for this information leak that will, undoubtedly, spread like a virus and incite the other villages to call for their own eugenics program.

(Not that Itachi and Hinata's wedding was anything of the sort, Shisui amended. Itachi and Hinata were both very traditionalist in their ways, despite their stick-in-the-mud reputations, and would never have condoned it. This Shisui knows for certain, being a dearly-beloved boyhood companion of Itachi and a close friend of Hinata due to their mutual interest in flower-pressing and Itachi's well-being.)

It had been specifically stated in the invitations that anyone breaching the confidentiality seal, a technique Shisui had gone to Danzo himself for, was going to get an eyeful of doryoku and be drowned in the Nakano. He had even decorated those himself, using special illusion techniques that made sharingan eyes flash warningly when the cards were held to a certain slant of light, or when leered at.

Shinobi were exceptionally blind and lenient to the tabloid industry it seemed, because in the end, even after utilizing some outstanding reconnaissance agents – hairdressers and maids, completely innocuous though entirely self-serving – the perpetrator remained anonymous. Shisui takes comfort in the fact that they had the date wrong – listing it at three months later, a mistake probably helped along by the fact that preparations were still in the stage of being half-baked and the stoic faces all the insiders maintained while being chased down – when in fact, the wedding was actually…

_at the end of the week_.

On second thought, it wasn't comforting at all.

* * *

_End._

[Theme: Wedding planner Shisui]


	2. Bridal Visits

II.

* * *

This was not really how Hinata wanted her wedding day to be like – indeed, she'd imagined a quick passionate elopement, leather, and motorbikes riding into the sunset, at the most extreme – but given who she'd chosen to marry (more importantly, who'd chosen to marry _her_) it was inevitable that money chests be exploding. Her dress alone was so atrociously expensive it could have put a shinobi on the moon and its _train_ seemed intent on living up to its name in terms of length and amount of coal needed to relocate it.

The Wedding of the Century, they called it – burying into a final obscurity the apocryphal, apocalyptic Jiraiya and Orochimaru affair that was ten kinds of illegal and a hundred kinds of _fucking_ _wrong –_ unknowing of its inauspicious beginnings, care of Uchiha Shisui.

This was how he introduced them, in a training ground: "You know why Itachi is scary? It's the way he acts with _exquisite_ courtesy, like he's about to kill you."

It's amazing how glorious things like deep, loving relationships start from that wreckage.

Ah, but speak of the devil, and he appears, looking detestably gorgeous.

"How did you get here?" Hinata asks, absolutely delighted, hastening to welcome him in before tripping over the ocean of lace. The intruder swims to save her, before she suffocates under the weight of the headdress. "The Hyuuga compound is extremely well-guarded."

"Do not underestimate my genius," Shisui winked, struggling to forget the sentry-deterring genjustsu of overpowering floral scents and girlish giggling, a cheap trick taking advantage of the baser instincts of men to avoid bridal entourages. "I come bearing the good wishes of _Iwa _jounin incapacitated about half a mile from your backdoor as well as a little thing from Itachi."

That said, he gave her a really nice smack on the cheek.

"T-that was from Itachi?" Hinata asked incredulously.

"To be honest, that was all me," admitted Shisui, smiling like a loon. "I offered, but Itachi refused to initiate the message." On a seemingly-unrelated note, he asks. "You know why it's custom that the groom never sees the bride before the wedding?"

Hinata shakes her head, a mistake since it dislodges what Shisui suspects is a dozen finely-crafted and bejeweled senbon from her hair. He caught some of them in mid-air and whistled at the sharpness.

"It's a same reason why we posted the best of ANBU sentinels around the compound. It goes back to the time when marriages were either arranged by parents or by luck of draw – they didn't want the groom to bolt in case the bride turned out to be Godzilla."

At this comment, Hinata accidentally jabbed the murderously-expensive heirloom, a pearl bird-in-the-cage pin, into her own head and was marvelously keeping up her pleasant face.

Shisui, observant if insensitive to a young bride's jitters, was quick to reassure.

"Of course Itachi wouldn't do that even if he saw you."

Sensing something a little wrong with his statement, Shisui tried again.

"Itachi wouldn't bolt unless there's another Godzilla." Hinata frowned.

"Another Godzilla, burning down Konoha." Shisui hastily corrected, trying to avoid a bridal crisis that, in reality, wasn't coming, considering Hinata's ability to take it all in stride.

"The hell with this – what I mean to say is," Shisui's eyes soften like only one person's ever seen before (Fugaku, in a moment of incomparable terror, when Shisui met Itachi for the first time and looked ridiculously enamored).

"You're a damn beautiful bride, Hinata."

* * *

_End._

[Theme: Bride Visits]


	3. Replacement Brides

(i botch up itahina really really bad here. this is stupid crack. XDDD)

III.

* * *

Shisui surveyed the scene with a thoroughness that would have genin whipping themselves into submission, literally, in extremely synchronized self-flagellation.

_These_ were all the people who had to pay the consequences of Hinata replying in the affirmative to Itachi's proposal and all were doing relatively well, with the notable exception of Fugaku, who was acting less father-of-the-groom and more mother-of-the-bride.

Neji was doing a stellar job of keeping his head up, although his exceptionally pink eyes were giving him away to the crowd at large. If he and Hinata had been a tad closer, like if Shisui hadn't interfered good-naturedly at a crucial junction in their relationship, his eyes could have resembled the prototype sharingan, that is not to say the sharingan developed because of crybaby Hyuugas.

Across from the Hyuugas, Sasuke, now a fully-grown young man who could be trusted to restrain his team from stealing the spotlight or setting the church of fire or whatever if not to the heartwrenching duty of best man, growled something to his teammate, who was had a reply so loud and so ready it had to be rehearsed. The concept of _bestfriends_ must have changed since Shisui's own time – back then, if _bestfriends _threatened to kill each other, they stayed _true_ to that promise, rather than flirting shamelessly like big, warring nations.

In fact, their bickering was only eclipsed by the crazy misinformed bridesmaids who'd deduced that this might – and indeed, they were _right_ – be the only chance they'd be going down the aisle in relation to Uchiha men.

Ultimately, the temple was as serene and solemn as it could be, considering that more than a hundred paranoid trained killers were gathered inside, forced to wear finery that left them vulnerable to ambush attacks, and made to endure the stifling heat of the sickly sweet-scented candles.

Satisfied _and proud_ that they managed to keep the body count to a minimum, Shisui teleported to where the Hyuuga compound was in uproar.

Hanabi impressed him by managing to run while wearing the full heiress regalia without a single sequin falling – now that Hinata was marrying out to grassier pastures, Hanabi was responsible for the inventory of the outfit and its 342 parts – shouting orders without a hair out of place.

"Intruders! Nee-san's gone!"

Shisui skidded to a stop, stunned, crashing headlong into the intricate bird cage Hiashi ordered to be built as a wedding gift which every now and then blared out classical music with subliminal messages supporting the administration of the branch seal.

That Hinata, whom he loved and admired for her valiant weathering through the numerous trials of sitting between two prodigies, sometimes three, be kidnapped… That someone _dared_… it was more unbelievable than a clan elder's sincerity.

_What to do now?_

* * *

It was an instantaneous reaction that was better thought through.

_Maybe the sixteenth option – postpone the wedding and call a press conference – would have been better than this,_ Shisui thinks the exact moment it was already too late to back out.

Strains of wedding music played. Flower petals flew. People in the front row were getting tears in their eyes.

Perhaps it was the exceedingly beautiful occasion graced by azure skies and white doves spiraling through the sky. Perhaps it was the ray of hope shining through from the future, crystalline and wondrous. Perhaps the absurdity of their greatest soldier under an genjutsu so elaborate only stellar doujutsu's could peek through, decked out in a ton of ivory lace and carrying a lofty bouquet with a look of such determination that it was tragic.

Sasuke, who wasn't there at the initial fireworks where the rest of the S-class doujutsu-users were rapidly debriefed, snorted ceremonial sake all over the black market formal robes Shisui had commissioned and paid dearly for in dignity (except that isn't really an issue now, is it?).

Shisui gave Sasuke the finger – this was, between them, the top-secret signal for _what-the-hell-are-you-waiting-for?-Itachi-needs-a-best-man! – _still dazed, he pushed the unsuspecting Naruto off his lap and padded towards his brother.

Itachi looked gobsmacked, that is, he was frowning, a little, kind of. Shisui tried not to let it bother him that Itachi had so very little versatility in his facial muscles. His cousin possibly would have reacted that same way if it was Kyuubi in rouge, wearing classy drag and freshwater pearls, and walking down the aisle.

"Why am I about to marry you, _Shisui_?" Itachi softly asked, looking down his nose at Shisui, who remained short despite the killer heels, like he'd never been able to. The choir's convoluted choruses about matrimonial bliss drowned out their conversation until everyone deludedly thought they were only seeing a blushing bride and her groom in affectionate banter.

"Hinata's come to her senses and left you at the altar, _of course_, _I_ couldn't let you down," Shisui said facetiously, before slapping himself with the bouquet for wayward sanity. Everyone stared at him some more. "No, no – I mean, Hinata's been kidnapped. I tried to signal – you must have been blinded by that light shining off your mother's earring, giant things – but stay calm –"

"– I am not about to lose my nerve –"

"Well, that's good, because everyone else will when they find out. I've knocked out Hinata's entourage, give us some time to plan… you don't want your marriage to start the next world war, right? Yes, I thought so."

* * *

_End._

[Theme: Replacement Brides]


	4. Rescue Missions

IV. (let's pretend i can ruin characterization if i want as it's CRACK. cheap excuse, i know.)

* * *

"Did you know how close she was to taking off my head? That veil could moonlight as a poleaxe! That glitter? _Crushed glass_ I'm telling you!"

_This can't be happening. _Hinata thought, unsuitably more comfortable while gagged and tied up than while wearing a dress that was paid for in blood of the innocent. Minutes after Shisui left to make sure the preparations were perfect, or at least still in existence, someone had broken through the parameter, cleverly making the most of the fact that the sentinels, being used to him, always trained activated Byakugan's into Shisui's careening blaze through the compound. Whether it was his magnetism or his amazing tendency to act like the Hachibi in a china shop no one except the branch members know.

"This is really low, even for us, on her _wedding day_?"

"We would've gotten to Konoha sooner if you hadn't insisted on watching the three-night Kabuki play serial!"

"I heard Uchiha _Shisui_ has a lot staked on this wedding. We're _dead_."

"Dude, this is Uchiha _Itachi's _fiancée, you know – we were dead three days ago."

* * *

The hardest parts of retrieval missions were, without exception, the soul-sucking well-wishers and wannabes. There was an explosion of rage, _biblical in proportion_, in all those who loved Hinata once the truth slipped, that is once Shisui fainted from the combination of the genjutsu's chakra drain, the golden headdress, the killer bodice and the suspicious-smelling candles in the couple's image.

Itachi claimed the sole right to go after his missing bride after Shisui, still doozy and grasping at the dregs of his chakra, doryoku-ed everyone into voting favorably and left the task of restraining Neji and Naruto to the bride and groom's little siblings. Of course, _he_, being umbilically attached to Itachi, got to go as well.

Slipping off the ceremonial robes which were such hindrances no wonder there was a correlation between falling in love and dying, they scaled the village walls and scanned the horizon.

Behind them, people tried not to get blinded by the brilliance of the Uchiha prodigies, more specifically, by the sunlight reflecting off their new prototype silver mission outfits in indestructible spandex with handy-dandy-really-DANDY rainbow glare, made to effortlessly blind and torture enemy-nin and whose proposal caused a riot that ended with mountain-Tsunade's nose going into orbit.

(Danzo meant what he said about going all out to protect Konoha.)

Shisui took the lead, flickering over trees in a manner that will someday inspire the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, never stopping until he tripped over the fungal outgrowth above where Kakashi and now, everyone else, periodically took a leak for luck before missions. It was the Yondaime's greatest legacy.

(Kakashi's greatest secret regret, for he had _many_, was that in accordance to rules of punishment, he didn't let Obito go. But anyway.)

High conscious of his terrible fate, Shisui scrambled for something to hold on to. Itachi's ponytail, though as tempting Hatake Kakashi's face mask and Morino Ibiki's fabled Icha-Icha shrine that broke more minds than his interrogation equipment, had been conditioned and hot-oiled to beyond perfection for his wedding and simply too slippery.

Time froze the way it always does at the most critical moment.

"Itachi, if I die, the _Mangekyou_…kill our caterers. Pay my alcohol tab. Name three children after me and teach them the _Shunshin_. Send Sasuke to a shrink immediately. Tell Uncle Madara that Tsunade didn't reject him simply because he was an Uchiha, but because she was fourteen and he was a sick creeper."

Itachi, who always makes very good use of time freezes and watching already holding his wedding planner up, blinked at that.

* * *

"I don't speak Latin." A tiny slab of slate muttered.

"I'm not your mother." Another growled.

"P-please don't fight."

Shisui closed his eyes. _Clearly_, he was going insane, but _damn_ he knew that voice and the Hokage did say to leave no stones unturned.

* * *

It really was some cockamamie hideout. And silver spandex did work.

Thus was the danger in threatening Hyuuga Hinata, who was considered S-class by association by more than a few villages.

* * *

"Itachi! _Shisuiiii_!" Hinata, liberated and only a bit blinded by all the rainbows going around, hugged her rescuer.

Shisui hugged back. Itachi stared. A cricket chirped.

(And someone groaned, alive because Hinata is like those old-school lords who forgive and forget and pays the defense fees of their kidnappers. The mind boggles.)

"Hinata, you're kind of hugging the wrong man, but carry on as you please."

Hinata blushed – something that made Shisui's wedding planning heart titter like a schoolgirl on acid – and immediately let him go.

"How did you find us?"

"Hinata, you heart is so big I didn't need a trail, merely followed its gravity."

Used to Shisui's bouts of smoothness, probably the only girl in Konoha who could say so, Hinata didn't break stride and hugged Itachi.

"Thank you, I'm sorry to have caused so much trouble."

"On the contrary, this was very enlightening." Itachi said gently, glancing quickly at Shisui, the corners of his mouth creased in amusement, and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

* * *

[Theme: Rescue Missions]


	5. Happily Ever Afters

(Did you know each chapter is supposed to be 500 words?)

**Notes**: check this out – forums(dot)narutofan(dot)com/album(dot)php?albumid=3600&pictureid=37945

* * *

V.

Arriving in Konoha, they landed on what appeared to be a large, ostentatious topiary of the Godaime Hokage, hastily redid their hair and makeup (Shisui taking the longest), and… _got married_.

It had gone very well and no gods had intervened. People had torn themselves out of their usual states of semi-imbecility to look smart and proper. Daimyos and heads of government came, despite their natural inability to stomach ninja populace. The priest was one of those who, for only a fat roll of cash, could address a gathering of ninjas while reneging on conscience and without sarcastic allusion to their nighttime activities.

The entourage had been flawless. Hanabi had perhaps never held a flower her entire life but wore a garden down the aisle with dignity and aplomb. Behind her, Hinata clutched her funeral wreath of a bouquet and smiled radiantly that everyone who broke their back and gave their blood under Shisui's tyrannical and mind-controlled wedding-planning regime felt vindicated.

The Hokage _did _stagger in drunk, like a Medusa, and indeed everyone turned to stone at the sight of her. For a short while, in which he looked rather like a shrieking banshee, Shisui's regard for his commander-in-chief and general sanity ebbed close to extinction.

The Uchiha and the Hyuuga, who really were hyenas under polite veneers, meanwhile, all gave very polite speeches and sentiments, perhaps unaware that a revolution that will usurp all their lies and backstabbing was in the making. The hypocrites will unveil themselves soon enough.

No one had tried to kill themselves or, more importantly, others, perhaps stayed by the badly-wrought likeness of Kami breathing fire down at them.

No one had tried to kiss the bride, except Itachi but that was the point, and no one molested the groom.

Sasuke, who had always been so nice, if a little unstable, unfortunately blew up halfway through the ceremony. Not quite literally, but close enough. One of the sparks flew into close proximity with the groom's sake cup – which was later found to hold butane – and set the altar afire.

No one had gotten hurt, but there was a calculating gleam in Shisui's eyes, so someone will be. This was _his _– well, not really, but _he _planned everything – damn wedding, after all, and everyone knew it.

It was the same gleam which made others forever hold their peace in stupefied pertrification, lest tongues get cut in the middle of the night.

Itachi had recited his vows perfectly and with surprising emotionality, each syllable strong and heartfelt and perfectly copied from Shisui's baritone deliverance a week earlier, an ingenious plan so people can cry over the eloquently-spoken words later when they edited the home videos. Hinata stuttered and squawked hers but looked so happy no one balked and called her on it.

And while they finally finished it off while the splendidly sappy phrase – "This is only for forever." – a thousand doves were released into the air, beating white wings effectively putting to death the title of "Hidden" in Hidden Village, bursting out of Itachi shadow-clones perched on the temple roof, flapping in the wind like big ol' flappers.

It would have been a magnificent sight.

Unfortunately, Madara chose that moment to give a thunderous and utterly heartbreaking rendition of "My Heart Will Go On".

It was, this Shisui knows and _laments_, a spectacle less of tradition and more lack of compassion.

But, regardless, they lived happily ever after.

* * *

End.

[Theme: Happily Ever After]

* * *

_BONUS: A Reception Scene – Theme: Punch_

Shisui came dashing in from the kitchens where he'd gone to (_hide the bouquet which he caught with the help of a little thing called Shunshin_) replace the marzipan statue of the newlyweds with a more lewd one Hinata had earlier veto-ed.

"Cyanide! No one drink the punch!"

Neji, a bit more composed after the loss of his one true love, had a hacking fit.

* * *

_THE END. REALLY._

_(No proposal scenes, no more reception scenes and no honeymoon scenes, no nextgen scenes – if you want it, write it. I know you can do it better.)_


End file.
